Judge: Texas man can be tried in childhood crime

Thursday

Mar 6, 2014 at 1:30 PM

JUAN A. LOZANO, Associated Press

CONROE, Texas — A Texas man accused of dousing a boy with gasoline and setting him on fire when he was a teenager can be tried as an adult for murder after the victim died from his burns nearly 13 years later, a judge ruled Thursday.

Authorities allege that Don Willburn Collins was 13 when he attacked Robert Middleton in 1998 on his eighth birthday near the younger boy's home in Splendora, about 35 miles northeast of Houston. Middleton was burned across 99 percent of his body and endured years of physical therapy before he died in 2011 from skin cancer blamed on his burns.

Middleton had initially named Collins as his attacker and the older boy was arrested in 1998. Collins spent several months in juvenile detention but was released after prosecutors said they did not have enough evidence to pursue the case.

Shortly before he died, Middleton gave a videotaped deposition in which he accused Collins for the first time of sexually assaulting him two weeks before the attack. The sexual assault allegation prompted investigators to reopen the case, and prosecutors charged the now 28-year-old Collins with murder last year — but they needed to move the case from juvenile to adult court to take him to trial.

After a three-day hearing on that issue this week, state District Judge Kathleen Hamilton ruled that Colllins' case could be transferred. The ruling enables the prosecutors' murder case against Collins.

Several witnesses testified during this week's hearing that Collins had confessed to them or others that he had been responsible for the attack on Middleton. Part of Middleton's taped deposition also was shown during the hearing.

In a separate case, Collins was convicted of sexually assaulting another 8-year-old boy. Now an adult, the victim testified during this week's hearing that Collins had threatened to burn him if he told anybody what happened.

Collins' attorney, E. Tay Bond, had argued that moving the case to adult court would violate his client's constitutional rights. Bond also questioned the reliability of Middleton's statements, as well as secondhand statements made by other witnesses, saying there was "no new credible evidence in this case."

Bond argued that the case should not be transferred to adult court because under state law in 1998, a juvenile had to be at least 14 years old for a capital felony offense case to be transferred to adult court. The law was changed in 1999 to lower the age to 10.

Prosecutors said the crime of murder did not take place until 2011, well after the law was changed. But Bond said the law couldn't be applied retroactively to Collins.

Collins, who is being held on a $1 million bond, will remain jailed as he faces up to 10 years in prison for a charge in neighboring San Jacinto County of failing to register as a sex offender.